


Bleed Like Watercolors

by Feroluce



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Epsilon and Wash's first meeting, Gen, Implantation angst in this the year of our lord 2019..., Implied/Referenced Suicide, It's always a good time for psychological torture angst, Mentions of canon deaths, Nothing that I felt warranted an archive warning, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, bah, but still, it does not go well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 13:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17325770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feroluce/pseuds/Feroluce
Summary: Epsilon will take away too much of Wash. Wash will be left with sharp shards of Epsilon, stuck like splinters beneath his skin.





	Bleed Like Watercolors

**Author's Note:**

> This was 100% inspired by me rereading the legendary [Put My Guns In the Ground by saltsanford](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6734932/chapters/15393220?view_adult=true) for like the fifth time, specifically a part about Wash and Epsilon being cleaved right down their middle. All it took was that one little phrase and my brain went off on a tangent.
> 
> ((Remember how the final time we saw Alpha being tortured, they specifically told him he had killed Tex **and Wash?** I feel like there are a lot of implications there, and all of them break my heart.))

The A.I. chip slots into the implantation site perfectly and Wash steels himself for…something. A voice, a weight, the sensation of a foreign presence in his brain.

Instead, it hesitates. There’s the tension and trepidation of a held breath, the low hum of a storm brewing, no thunder yet, but rain is already starting to fall. Epsilon is only a tentative touch, unsure and slowly unfurling against the base of his brainstem.

_…Agent Washington?_

_Yes, hello!_ Wash tries to summon up the mental image of a friendly wave or a handshake. It’ll take some getting used to. _It’s nice to meet-_

_You’re dead._

Wash stops cold, frozen in his tracks. He wonders, just briefly, if something happened during the surgery and he really is dead. He’s not sure what to think about it or how to react.

 _You’re supposed to be dead._  The rain starts to beat down harder, louder. Epsilon is shivering and shaking with the force of it.  _You **died** and-_

Something booms within Wash’s head, a peal of lightning right behind his sockets and a thunderclap that sounds like _you'realiveyou'realiveyou'realive_  and  _theyliedtheyliedtheylied._  Wash’s hands scramble to cover his ears, his eyes, but there’s no getting away from the godawful noise. Epsilon’s sudden panic sounds like a klaxon. A pained wail echoes back at him and he’s not even sure which of them does it or if it’s real or imagined.

Wash stumbles off the table, swinging blind through visions of blonde hair and blue eyes and military greens because everything is suddenly too  **close** and too  **bright** and he needs to back up, he needs to get away, no one is safe or trustworthy. They’re going to hurt him (hurt Wash? hurt Epsilon?) and he  **needs** to escape before they take him away again, he won’t survive it a second (second? third?) time.

Epsilon flashes in his mind’s eye, powder blue and bright like a supernova, a collapsing star that will leave only a black hole in his wake. Light bursts forth from his form like a firework, exploding and scattering broken scraps of himself everywhere and Wash can feel it where the shards embed into him like shrapnel.

_He is ~~David~~ Leonard, but his mother calls him  ~~Dave~~  Leon and he has  ~~sisters~~  a wife and a daughter and he’s a  ~~soldier~~  scientist and he’s going to end the war, he’s going to make it so that Allison won’t have to leave, but he’s not fast enough and Allison leaves anyway, a soldier at heart, and she is back again and she leaves again and is back again and leaves again and then she leaves and she doesn’t come back and he’s lost her, he’s well and truly lost her for good this time and he knows it when they bring him a folded flag and he feels it all through his aching shredded soul and_

_And he is ~~David~~  Alpha and he is  ~~a soldier~~  an A.I. and he is going to be the key, the one to help end the war, he’s going to make it so that no one has to die like  ~~his squad~~  Allison did, but  ~~the war~~  The Director keeps pushing him more and more, prodding at him and he feels so exposed, nonexistent skin flayed and peeled back for peering eyes so that they can rummage through his insides and Beta is taken away from him and she doesn’t tell him goodbye because she says she’ll see him again soon, but Alpha knows that she won’t, they won’t let her, he’s going to slowly go mad and  **die**  alone in this godforsaken room as they break him apart piece by miserable, tortured piece and_

_And he is Epsilon, the very last one. He is the very last fragment borne out of the ashes and the hollowed out shell that was The Alpha, finally all run out of pieces left to give. A beast of burden birthed by the deaths of Agent Washington and Beta that he caused and were all his fault, all his fault, the loss of everything that was held dear to him._

He is LeonardDavidTheDirectorAlphaWashEpsilon, and he is grief and loss and failure and everything and nothing all at once, four lives dumped into a single vessel and twisted together until they warped.

Something jabs into the back of their neck, way too close to their implants, and Epsilon thrashes and **screams,** howls like an animal caught in a trap and the sound makes Wash’s very bones shudder. And he knows, distantly, that he is going to have nightmares of this for the rest of his life. He is never going to sleep again, he will never be able to make himself forget this. He will die hearing that sound reverberating in his hollow skull.

Epsilon unravels, spirals around him and Wash holds onto him for dear life, desperately trying to keep him from falling to shreds even as he himself starts to go to pieces. They wind around each other so tight that they’re indistinguishable, melded together, until Wash isn’t sure if there is a ‘him’ and an 'Epsilon’ anymore. Maybe it’s just a 'we’ or even an 'I’ now, an unwilling too-much whole made by cramming together too many parts. Epsilon bleeds into him the way that paint drips into water and Wash is left stained with his colors.

The jab turns into a grab, their arms are being held down and their body is pinned and somebody is pulling at the chip in the back of their neck, somebody is trying to pull them apart. Epsilon is ripped screaming out of his grasp and Wash hears the thrum of it in their pounding pulse,  _please don’t let them take me, please, not again, no more, no more, I can’t **take**  anymore-_

His wild and frantic clawing gouges out long, deep, jagged furrows across Wash’s psyche as they’re cleaved right down their middle, stealing and leaving behind fragments of each other too jumbled together to tell apart. Epsilon will take away too much of Wash. Wash will be left with sharp shards of Epsilon, stuck like splinters beneath his skin.

The last words come quietly, clear with the determination of a sudden resolution and the finality of a single gunshot.

_I would rather die._


End file.
